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January 17, 2012

This I Believe: EMC Presales Manifesto…

Some big news today – I’m PUMPED, honored, inspired, humbled all in one little “emotion bundle”. Starting now, I’m the leader for all of EMC Presales.

This is a group of some of the best folks I’ve ever had the pleasure of working along with – and I hope that they know that I’m one of them. My goal is a simple one:

I believe that it is my duty to help everyone – in any role – by taking obstacles out of our way, simplifying our life, and providing solid support infrastructure (org, people, operations, finance, and systems and tools)

I believe that for our customers, partners, technology partners – the technical experts that engage with them are one of the most important roles in helping them, and their value is in their technologist nature. It’s just ONE part of what makes a good SE standout, but without that – they are missing something critical. Think of it this way… it may sound corny, but I visualize the SE like a gunslinger in those old westerns. Yes, honorable (always thinking of the customer). Yes, a “white knight” (a positive force). But the defining characteristic is that they are the fastest draw in the west – ergo their technical skills. If they are a senior leader, sure, they get less keyboard time :-) But, they hunger for it still, and when any moment presents itself – they seize it – note that it is diametrically opposed to being a bureaucrat. Dealing with bureaucracy? Sure – comes with the territory. When you become a bureaucrat – poof, your value = 0. If that ever happens to me, someone put me out of my misery.

I believe that the roughly 3,400 people in EMC Presales (a variety of roles and capacities – ranging from Account Technical Consultants, to specialty folks called “STCs” around technologies, solutions and specific GTM things like our partner TCs and the TCs that support our SIs) are some of the best I know – but there’s always an opportunity to take something great and make it even better.

I believe that there some specific things (mostly tools, systems, shared services – more on this later) that I can do to give them back time (which is precious) in the near term, and in exchange work on continuing to evolve our skills and transform our approaches.

I believe that there is such a thing as a “culture” of presales. In the same way that you can be a career customer/partner facing technologist (usually called an “SE”), those people have a certain way of “seeing the world”. Likewise, it’s aligned with, but different than the way someone who is a career sales person sees the world, or how a career services person sees the world. In the end – these different world views must come together in what matters the most – the customer and how THEY see the world.

Whenever there is a change – people want to know “what does this leader think?” While I’m lucky to know many folks, there’s FAR more I don’t know (but look forward to meeting)… So, I’ve codified what I believe about presales. Half jokingly (but the other half dead seriously) – I’ve called it the "EMC Presales Manifesto”.

Read on to see the Manifesto, and see a video of Patrick Dennis and I targeted at the EMC Presales community (which includes, in my eyes, our EMC Partners).

The EMC Presales Manifesto:

This is what I believe, and what I try to stand by – always:

We put the customer first, company second, and ourselves third.

Think: We always do our best to provide the right answers and solutions.When we are inevitably wrong, we admit it quickly, openly, and learn from mistakes we and others make.

We are technologists.

Think: We cannot be stopped from learning.We learn independently and constantly based on personal curiosity. If our specialty is a set of technologies – we are hands on, and know them cold.If our specialty is the customer – we know their use of technology (EMC and others) cold.

We are evangelists.

Think: We are constantly saying “this is so cool, I want to SHOW you, I want to PERSUADE you” – to anyone who will listen.Beyond doing this with customers– it also means we do“technical selling” enablement internally/with partners, and deal-by-deal we help with technical account strategy.

We live ONE EMC.

Think: While we all are part of “tribes” (people both inside and outside EMC who share our passion, interests and beliefs) – we share openly, transparently, publicly with all EMC and the world.We respect others and bias towards blindness to organizational boundaries and lines.

We live the “75/25 Model”.

Think: We spend 75% of our time with customers 1:1, with groups of customers, with our partners, and 25% learning – and somehow make it all fit into an “EMC day”.

We are positive force.

Think: We think of the customer, our tribe, ONE EMC, the community at large, the world - and never go negative on the bad guy.

So, there you have it. I’m constantly reminding people that I only have one gear in the “Chad gearbox”. What you see is what you get. In a way, it’s a vote by the EMC leadership – that manifesto, and those beliefs matter, and EMC Presales matters. While change and transformation is a constant (see this blog post) – these core values - I’ve done them consistently over my life, and don’t anticipate changing :-)

For the last few months, have been furiously working on a broad set of stuff, and learning from key folks like Patrick Dennis and others. These include: insanely complex org considerations; diving deeply into what we could do to help our EMC Presales (and partners!!) lives easier; what tools and systems could make their jobs more smooth; what we could/should tweak in how we train, communicate and engage.

Now we’re in the phase of taking the strategic org design principles (which aren’t wildly different than the org structure of today), priorities, something we call the “levers of decision making” (more on that later), and starting the process of learning and adapting to local considerations, local constraints. We would be fools to think a plan concocted in the ivory tower of HQ would be right :-) Expect to see me wherever you are in the world.

More immediately, the changes will bring the vSpecialist technical folks into presales, along with our Unified and Isilon brothers and sisters into a merged Mid-Tier specialty set of ninjas. For the vSpecialists – you’ll recognize the EMC Presales Manifesto – it’s been the same principles that have guided us for the last 3 years – and remember – once a vSpecialist, always a vSpecialist – because the role is defined by what you believe, far, far less than an org chart.

2012 will be a journey from everyone in EMC presales roles (and I hope for our partners too!). I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK. What do I need to know? What do you want the most? What do you like the most and don’t want to change?

Here’s Patrick and I talking about some of the details (increasingly, we’re just biasing towards “heck, put it out there” – and I’m going to continue to apply pressure down that path for tools, resources, etc):

BTW – if you want to pickup “Tribes” by Seth Godin (when I read it, my constant reaction was “yeah!” – and this became highly recommended reading to the vSpecialist folks) – check it out:

What about my regular readers? Do you love VMware? Do you love technology? Well I have some great news for you – nothing much should change around Virtual Geek. You might get a little more of a peep into what’s going on in EMC Presales – but there’s going to be just as much nerd-on-nerd action as always – because, after all, that’s who I am.

Like I said – there’s only one gear in my gearbox. I’m really THAT one-dimensional :) The moment I stop being a technologist, passionate, and open and transparent – then I need to reminded of my own manifesto :-)

Chad, I couldn't be more excited for you. Having watched the evolution from the outside as a customer, partner and step-child (possibly red-headed), it's amazing to see how EMC's presence in the market has changed. I can't wait to see how the concept and excitement of a vSpecialist-like organization works at scale, and I know they couldn't have picked a better person to make it work.

Congratulations on the move, and please let me know if there's anything I can help with from my side of the house!

This announcement does nothing but make me smile. As one of the lucky guys that got to be close enough to see you work in person as well as see the effect your passion and character have on others (including myself), this fricking rocks.

I am so excited for all the presales guys/girls I know. Even though many of us predicted this happening in secret. It is an awesome testament to the vision and leadership at EMC to give you the shot to take EMC presales to the next level.

Congrats Chad! Couldn't think of a better leader for the position, and I thoroughly enjoyed the embedded video. Thanks again for your help with Alcon, Novartis and my account patch. We're diving head-first into VPLEX and geo-dispersed VM clusters as we speak.

Chad - Congratulations. This is the best news i've heard in a long time. Unification of a Mid-Tier specialty set of pre-sales ninjas makes EMC a very scary force indeed. Formidable, dominant, overwhelming. Awesume! Look out established players and newcomers. EMC has refortified and we're scarier than ever.
GO SALES!

Thanks Chad! As an active participant in the vSpecialist community, I know that I am a better presales resource from learning from your manifesto. This is what our team has lived for the last 3-4 years. I hope the presales community is excited about being able to learn and spend more time with our great technologies. Our customers are going to appreciate being shown solutions.

Chad - I wholeheartedly agree with this manifesto. One minor comment, though. "and never go negative on the bad guy" -- I think should could be changed to simply "never go negative", especially with regards to competitors. :)

Wow, from vSpecialist to SENinjas and dare I say CSESamurais. Chad, this couldn't have happened to a better and more qualified person. In fact, I am a little let down that it took the executive staff so long to really tap into the leadership value they have in you. All the best and congrats on the move. I can't offer the same help that Jeramiah did (obviously), but am very happy to see this happen for you.

I did find one thing in your post that may be inaccurate - I think you may have to add "super-overdrive" to your gearbox. Sounds like you're going to surpass "insanely busy".

I think of the manifesto as kind of like the iRobot: "Three Laws of Robotics". This is the trick to providing large-scale-autonomy - people don't need to ask the question when they can just run through the manifesto and 99% of the time they can work out the answer themselves.

This is an awesome change for the presales team at EMC, though ultimately it is EMC's customers who will benefit most. There's a lot of value in an autonomous, empowered, educated nerd. :-)

Thank you Chad for verbalizing exactly the soft reasons why I have joined EMC (other than the technical ones.) This is my 8th week here and am thrilled to be in the first class of TCs to get your mission credo at Live New Hire Training! From the viewpoint of the newbie at EMC, but a veteran of the storage industry and pre-sales, you couldn't be more correct in your assesment of what it takes to be highly effective and successful.

Congratulations. You're a rare example to us in the community of someone who found a way to blend leadership with skill without giving up their technical edge and passion.

You asked for feedback... Can EMC provide a reliable tool to assess our non-EMC storage utilization for the purposes of scoping an alternative EMC solution?

As a prospective customer, I'm very frustrated with our most recent experience collecting ESXTOP data and sending to EMC for analysis to be given in exchange an extremely inflated analysis of our utilization and our needs. The report (from mitrends?) said our utilization was 4-7x greater than actual base upon submitted data. How can EMC and my technical sales engineer make that mistake? Furthermore, why can't they correct the mistake after 2 weeks?

What I want most as a prospective EMC customer in the pre-sales process is the following mapped to my org's needs... 1) an efficient path to obtain the features, advantages, and benefits of an EMC solution 2) presentation 3) proposal 4) a great storage solution

So far, the experience is severely lacking and less than I'd expect from EMC and your resources. I could add other frustrations but this is already long for a comment. TY.

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The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by Dell Technologies and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Dell Technologies or any part of Dell Technologies. This is my blog, it is not an Dell Technologies blog.